


head of the flock

by teacuptaako



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Balance Arc, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 02:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10754583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacuptaako/pseuds/teacuptaako
Summary: Lup knows she's beautiful, and brilliant, and adored by everybody she meets. She has to know it because you can't leave shit like your worth up for discussion.





	head of the flock

The universe owes Lup.

It owes her a better childhood then the one she had to scrape up herself. It owes her beautiful clothing. It owes her the right to old age. It owes her fresh pastries, warm rain, loud music, cats, black eyes, neon nail polish and grass. The universe owes Lup more then it ever gave her, and she believes that one day it's going to give back everything that it took away. The sky will apologize and hand her a paintbrush, and say, here, you can do the sunrise today.

The universe owes Lup interest.

It owes her fifteen dollars, minimum.

\------------------

When they're making their relics, Lup makes the most fashionable gauntlet that she possibly can. This thing is going to save the universe. It's going to let everybody who's been consumed back out into the world. It's not going to take any more lives. It's going to fit perfectly on her hand like she's goddamn fantasy Tim Gunn and she's going to stop The Hunger in it's tracks. When she's crafting it, she makes sure to pour every ounce of frustration into it, every single memory of exhaustion, bitterness, and anger. She wants this to work, so badly, she _needs it to_.

\------------------

Taako and Lup got into magic at the same time. They were in an alley clutching grimy handfuls of mud, planning to throw them at the rich people walking by. This was when Taako was taller but Lup was stronger, when Lup was braver but Taako had better ideas. The mud stained their hands black and squished between their fingers like clay.

When Taako flung his handful something changed within it, mid-air, turning it from mud into bright green paint. Lup threw hers at the exact same time, but it turns into a ball of fire and hits Taako's paint ball. The mix explodes on a passing man's cape. The cape doesn't react for a moment, then burns outwards into heat and light. It lasts maybe twenty seconds before the man stamps it out, but for Lup the moment lasts forever.

They turn to each other, stunned. The man sees them in entrance, starts to yell and run at them, and their lips twist into smirks.

Magic started there. Lup with her brother, covered in mud, running from the man screaming in the street after them, hunger in their stomachs because Taako didn't know how to cook yet and Lup didn't want to steal.

Taako was always good at turning one thing into another. He taught Lup how to reframe sadness into anger, apology into viciousness, hips into weapons, jokes into code. He taught her about locks and bartering and paprika and pretending to like people so they would be nicer to you.

Lup was always good at explosions. She was always good at finding things where they shouldn't be. She taught Taako how to read body language, how to throw a decent right hook, how to cheat at poker, how to raise your voice so people give you what you want so that you will leave them alone.

\------------------

There was one cycle when everybody except Lup dies.

They were on a water planet with seven tropical islands in an archipelago as the only viable landmass. The light of creation bounced off Magnus' head when it fell to earth. It took them three months to figure out that the population of the planet was plant life, sentient fish, and a few beasts with claws on an island that everyone wordlessly agreed to avoid.

Barry drowns. Lucricia drowns. Magnus drowns. All in one sweep, after one of their boats overturned when they were investigating an island on the far side from anybody else. Merle and Davenport broke open some coconuts and ate them, which was bad because it turned out they were deadly. Taako and Lup gave them a sort of burial-at-sea, best they could under the circumstances, and delivered eulogies that were only partially mocking. Something with talons kills Taako, and Lup finds his body half-eaten and mangled. She digs for an entire day to make him a grave, and rolls what's left of his body into it. Her arms burn when she finally gets him buried again.

No eulogy for him. No point. She just sat silently. Sunburnt, tired, furious, scared, and lonely.

When the hunger came Lup gunned it out of the system with the light of creation tossed in the co-pilot chair and the corpse of some creature with claws laid out on the beach behind her.

"Dude," said Magnus, when everybody was back. "That was sort of fucked up, wasn't it?"

"You good?" Lucricia asked Lup, quietly. "I'm sorry you ended up by yourself for so long. Thanks for getting us out of there."

Taako found Lup after everybody'd separated to their own quarters and Captainport the control freak was back at the helm. He sat between her legs while she braided his hair eight different ways until her hands stopped shaking, and then he held her while she cried.

\------------------

When Lup gets everybody to promise not to kill an entire world, the deal is sealed with several badass secret handshakes and a team cheer. Magnus and Taako look a little abashed for a while, and Lup is still a little bit mad at them, but they resolve all that soon enough. Taako puts the crystal in a pocket on the inside of his jacket, under his cloak, where it'll stay put. Barry doesn't go near water anymore and Lup doesn't want him to. This journey is changing them.

The next planet they land on is made out of rocks that look like hard candies.

\------------------

One of the best things in life is shoes, specifically other people's shoes. Taako and Lup have a _lot of shoes_.

Before they even met the rest of the crew, it was sort of their thing. They'd go to bars, hustle at pool, and collect from their victims in the form of footwear. Between both sets of feet, they could be wearing four different people's shoes all at one time, to maximise the amount of ribbing they could get in. Sometimes Lup would pick a target because they were a jerk that needed to be punished, but sometimes it was because of their _10/10 pumps._

Lup loves the atmosphere of bars. She loves the cute girls that gather there, and she loves destroying the unwary with her skill at darts, and she loves weird little cocktails, and dancing, and heckling the live music. Sometimes she'll go to one by herself and start a fight before slipping out the back and reporting it to the police herself, for the fun of it. Sometimes she meets someone she likes and follows them home for some fun. Sometimes this means sex. Mostly it means robbery and sneaking out a window. Once she tried to steal a dog but it started barking and making a real scene.

Lup's tall but she wears heels anyway. Everyone should feel blessed to see her, might as well make sure that’s as many people as possible.

Taako's short. He has to wear heels to keep up.

\------------------

Formal education was hard. It was difficult and boring and long, and it felt like Lup was being funnelled through a tube into 1 out of 3 possible career choices. When she found out about the Institute for Planar Research and Exploration, she knew that she's supposed to be on that damn spaceship. She's the best at not just anything she cares to try, but specifically this science shit, and- really- what she says at the press conference is true. This world couldn't hold a candle against her. There has to be more out there that she can take for herself.

In their apartment are hundreds of chairs, thrown clothes doubling as a full-cover rug. Their beds are covered in enough pillows and blankets that Taako jokes about being the most comfortable hoarders in existence. In the kitchen are all manner of specialty pot, pan, cutlery, and gadget, because Lup gets him abstract appliances for every birthday and candlenights. On the walls are Lup's paintings, vivid colours and abstract shapes that are supposed to represent feelings. The closets are shoved full of coats, shawls, jackets, shrugs, hats, sprinkled with Lup's extensive collection of umbrellas (you need one for every outfit, it's not an addiction, shut the hell up Taako-), and of course there are shoes. It's comfortable, it's home. But it's small. Compared to the promise of every dimension that there ever was or will be, it's so small.

Not everything that she does is with Taako; they're different people. Complementary, not matching. He's her twin though, and he's her best friend. He makes her waffles and he's also the beholder of half their wardrobe, so. He's really got to come with her. He seems to think that _she's_ the one that's going with _him_ , but he's wrong.

\------------------

Women look out for other women. Lup has known this universal truth since she was very little and realizing that she looked different from others her age. Girls help other girls; the problem is that people argue about who 'gets' to be a woman, and who doesn't. Lup transitioned early so she got off better then most. But now. 

She's on a doomed planet full of people that her friends don't seem to think are people.

"Light them the fuck up," she tells Troth.

\------------------

When the chucke-fuck gang takes her up to The Bureau of Balances moon base and met Lucricia without knowing who she was to them, Lup's heart breaks. Davenport came in and her heart flashes right through into anger again, like Taako's paintball being lit on fire all over again. For a blinding instant she is indescribably furious at Lucricia for doing this to them, and she's a second away from wresting control away from her brother and blasting a hole through "The Director's," stupid fucking head, but.

The logic makes sense. Lucricia's trying. Everybody's trying. Davenport's life was the mission, so what else was there to be done? Lup wants to say that there were other choices, that there are always other choices, but there's not much to that argument if you take away the hurt and betrayal she's still working past. There is no way for her to put aside the agony she feels at being here, in an umbrella, or the soul-deep furious disappointment at herself and at her brother for the Phoenix Gauntlet. Her shame is so intense that she almost misses Lucricia telling Davenport to take away the relic for destruction, but she does catch it.

'Crecia looks old. She looks brittle and stretched very thin. Lup's never been very tactile, but she wants to give Lucricia a hug.

It is so very cold in the Umbra Staff.

\------------------

Lup's in a convenience store waiting behind someone who's been patting down his pockets in exaggerated fashion, looking for his wallet for almost two minutes now. In her own cart there isn't much, just seventeen sticks of gum and two popsicles, and she wants to get out of there fast.

"My _guy_ , you are being pathetic, wasting my incredibly valuable time, and holding up the line." Lup drawls, after another three minutes of this tragic farce, "Look, I'll spot you this one because I've got places to be, but you _owe me_."

The guy turns around in surprise, and it's someone Lup actually recognizes. Greg Grimmaldis, from the IPRE team that constructed, ' _Starblaster_."

She smiles at him the best she can under the circumstances, which is to say tersely and sarcastically.

"Thanks," he agrees, "Fifteen dollars. I'll pay you back, dude, promise."

\------------------

Lup knows she's beautiful, and brilliant, and adored by everybody she meets. She has to know it because you can't leave shit like your worth up for discussion.

Faith. Merle believes in a God That Grew Things and Taako believes in the good handbags with the cream stitching down the handle. Lup buys Merle seeds for candlenights, and she trusts her brother to coordinate his outfit with hers for maximum twin power. She gets Lucricia journals two at a time and she steals Barry's denim jackets because she know he gets a lot out of seeing her wear them. Davenport tells her stories about his time in the city guard and she tells him about the way light shines through water when it is misty.

The seven of them are never going to be forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for this!! I wrote it all in one go because I had FEELINGS and I LOVE MY WIFE. If you wanna talk to me I'm @legitgunch on twitter, and I 100% love chatting with new people.


End file.
